


Rescue Mission

by ChronicBookworm



Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: Banter, Fake Marriage, Kidnapping, M/M, Mission Fic, Platonic Fake Marriage, Rescue Missions, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:21:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21748231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronicBookworm/pseuds/ChronicBookworm
Summary: “Pree should be getting back from important meeting on Leith, but I’ve not heard anything. And he called yesterday, but he sounded a bit weird. I’m worried something might have happened,” Gared said.“Why don’t you get a Warrant on him? Get the RAC to find him for you?”“Because that would make it, like, a Thing. He’s probably just got caught up with politics, making friends of the Leithians and Qreshis. You know what Pree is like, and this congress was important to him. He wouldn’t appreciate us bursting in on him in the middle of important negotiations. I don’t want it to be a Thing unless it actually is a Thing.”“Well, pack your bags, because we’re going to Leith. I think it might just be a Thing.”
Relationships: Gared/Pree (Killjoys), Johnny Jaqobis & Gared (Killjoys), Johnny Jaqobis & Pree
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Rescue Mission

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skitz_phenom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skitz_phenom/gifts).



Being on a sabbatical was all well and good, but there was the perennial question of what to do with himself after he and Ollie had blown up the Hackmod factory once and for all. He’d stuck around for a little while afterwards, but while she’d made her home and family with the Hackmods, they weren’t his. They were welcoming enough, happy to have him after he’d proven himself on their side, but there was always that little bit of suspicion. He wasn’t one of them. He was a normie. They weren’t his family.

He’d gone home to Telen for a while, to see if all of it was as shitty as he remembered, or just his part of it (turned out it was all of it), he’d done some completely ordinary, run-of-the-mill, not-dangerous-at-all shipping of goods, and he’d even tried being a farm hand on a ranch, remembering the spot of land D’av had shown him on Leith that could be his if he claimed it, but herding cows around was not what he had imagined it to be, and he was considering moving on. The people were hard, didn’t trust easily, which he was used to and could work with, and gave each other shit in the non-fun kind of way, the kind where there was no love to take the sting out of it, which he wasn't used to and found difficult to work with. It was during this time that Gared called.

“Look, I don’t want to bother you, and it’s probably nothing,” he said.

“Well, now that you’ve said that, I can almost guarantee it’s not nothing,” Johnny replied.

“Pree should be getting back from important meeting on Leith, but I’ve not heard anything. And he called yesterday, but he sounded a bit weird. I’m worried something might have happened.”

“Weird how?” Johnny asked.

“Like, curt. Didn’t really want to chat?”

And yeah. That was weird.

“Why don’t you get a Warrant on him? Get the RAC to find him for you?”

“Because that would make it, like, a Thing. He’s probably just got caught up with politics, making friends of the Leithians and Qreshis. You know what Pree is like, and this congress was important to him. He wouldn’t appreciate us bursting in on him in the middle of important negotiations. I don’t want it to be a Thing unless it actually is a Thing. And like, what if he doesn’t want me to come? What if I’m just an annoyance, and he’s found someone else on Leith he likes better?”

Yeah, no. That was so incredibly unlikely Johnny immediately discounted it as an option. Pree was head-over-heels for Gared – that didn’t just go away because of one short week apart.

Pree had been on a summit on Leith discussing the future relationships of the Quad, much of which was still up in the air. Pree was going to aim for reparations from Qresh for breaking the 7th generation accords, the bombing of Old Town, the wall, the poisoned air and food, none of which in any way could be blamed on Westerley. He’d also said he’d see about getting reparations for the damage the Hullen and the Lady had wreaked on Westerley, but he didn’t have high hopes for that. Just squeezing recognition from them for the things that had been their fault would be difficult enough. John could easily see how such a summit could go wrong, and politics could be a bloody business. If Gared’s instincts were telling him something was wrong, he was probably right.

“Well, pack your bags, because we’re going to Leith. I think it might just be a Thing.”

*

Coming back to Lucy was coming home. He had lived on Lucy right up until finding a ranch that would take him as a hand while he learned. He still wasn’t sure what he wanted from life. Except he knew this: whatever he wanted, it included Lucy in some way.

He’d told the ranch that he was leaving to go and rescue a friend in trouble. They’d told him that if he left now, he didn’t need to bother coming back. The fact that it hadn’t bothered him at all told him more than a year of working on a ranch could, that ranching probably wasn’t for him. He guessed this was as good an opportunity as any to move on and find something else for him to do, to see if he’d find something that fit him better than being a Killjoy. To see if he could find his people and his place in the galaxy outside of the co-dependent mess Team Awesome Force had become, at the end.

“Are we going on a mission, John?” Lucy asked.

“I guess we are, girl.”

“You’ve been in one place for so long I was getting worried. You never visit me anymore.”

“Aw, are you feeling neglected? I thought you might be getting sick of me.”

“I could never get sick of you, John.”

“Me neither, girl. Me neither.”

*

Since there were no signs of Pree having left the resort compound the summit was being held at, Johnny decided to start looking there, which involved going undercover – something he normally really liked. There was one snag, though.

“You want us to get married?”

“Pretend married,” Johnny explained. “So we blend in better.”

“I don’t know...”

“I used to do it with Dutch all the time. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Yeah, but still feels like Pree might get upset,” Gared said.

“You know, given that the whole point is to rescue Pree, I doubt he’ll be too finicky with the methods we use.”

Gared still seemed hesitant.

“If it makes you feel better, Pree and I pretended be married once. So think of it as an experience Pree got that he’s sharing with you.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I insulted his mother and then we got into a gun fight that got us banned from Eulogy. But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be a better fake husband.”

Gared still hesitated.

“Come on, it’ll be fine. I swear to you, I’ll be an amazing husband, you’ll start to regret marrying Pree as early as you did.” Then, realising that wasn’t going to help Gared’s particular complaint, he added, “But not inappropriate. Child-friendly fun only, except maybe with a tiny bit more violence than child-approved media usually has.”

“Yeah, okay. If it’s for Pree.”

*

The resort compound was made up of several buildings on rolling hills, green like you could see on Leith and Qresh, not Westerley. It was a fine compound, the buildings had nice arches in marble and airy courtyards in an attempt to imitate the mansions on Qresh. Inside was more of the same, with lush carpets, expensive wood panelling, chandeliers, but Johnny was pretty sure the chandeliers were gilded brass, and a knock on the wood revealed it was made of far cheaper material underneath – this was meant to convey a Qreshi feeling for Leithians, a cheap imitation of luxury.

The attendant at the front desk looked at them with badly concealed worry when they approached to check in.

“I’m very sorry, sirs,” she said. “But the resort is fully booked for a private function.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” said Johnny, “especially since I’m absolutely sure our booking went through. Can you check your database again?”

Lucy had made the booking, and she would not have let him down.

“I – there appears to be some kind of mistake. You shouldn’t have been able to make this booking.”

“I understand this has put you in a very difficult situation,” Johnny said sympathetically. “But we can be very discreet, and none of your bosses need to know about this little… hiccup. Don’t worry, we won’t be leaving our room much, will we, sweetcheeks?”

Gared startled.

“Uh, sure. I mean, no. Honey-bear.”

Johnny felt his smile become an inch more forced.

“It’s our anniversary,” he said, to cover up Gared’s awkwardness. “We spent our honeymoon here five years ago. It would be so romantic to spend our anniversary here again – I booked this weekend especially. Is there anything you can do? It would be such a shame to have to change our tradition, and find someplace else to spend our anniversaries in the future.”

It took some time and some sweet talking, but luckily those were things Johnny was good at, and eventually they had a room in one of the far buildings, as far away from the political summit as possible. The receptionist sold it as one of their honeymoon suites, perfect for couples that wanted privacy. On the one hand, Johnny definitely did want privacy. On the other, it kind of sucked being so far away from anywhere else.

“What the hells was that?” Johnny asked, as soon as they had rounded a corner and were out of earshot of the concierge.

“What?” Gared asked.

“You know – that! Honey-bear.”

“I thought I don’t know how to be a fake husband, so I pretend to be my real husband.”

“If that’s what Pree is like, I think you two need to see a relationship counsellor.”

“What’s one of those do?”

“Think of it like a bartender, but without the alcohol.”

“What’s the point of that?”

*

The room was in the same vein – looked extremely luxurious, but a closer look revealed it was mostly fake. But they clearly had gone to the extra effort, and if they’d actually been on a honeymoon or anniversary or some other romantic trip, he would definitely have appreciated it.

“Awww, look, they even folded the towels into heart for us,” he commented. “Isn’t that sweet? When this is over, maybe you and Pree can even stay here for real?”

“This is the nicest place I’ve ever been,” Gared said. “This carpet is so soft, you could probably sleep straight on the ground, and not wake up sore all over.”

“Don’t get too used to it,” Johnny replied. “I don’t think we’re staying long.”

He found a terminal to plug Lucy into, and let her loose on the resort’s firewalls. She made the connection almost immediately.

“This was easy,” she said. “Do you not have anything challenging for me, John?”

“Well would you look at that,” he said as she threw up her first findings onto the screen. There was a secret section of the resort marked only on the staff maps, behind the spa. “That sure seems suspicious. If I were holding someone prisoner for unknown reasons, that’s definitely where I would do it.”

“I cannot get those doors open from here,” she commented. “I need a port closer to the spa.”

“Don’t worry girl, I got you,” he said, tactfully not making any comments about her having requested something challenging literally less than two minutes ago. “So, sugar-buns,” he turned to Gared. “What do you say about a trip to the spa?”

“Sounds good,” Gared said, then paused for a second. “What’s a spa?”

*

To make everything complicated, the terminal that opened the secret door was around the corner from the actual secret door, and once Johnny had gotten it unlocked, it would only stay open for 10 seconds, meaning he didn’t have time to unlock and open it. Which meant that it would be up to Gared to open the door, and either go in and find Pree, or keep the door open long enough for Johnny to join him.

“Because I can’t explain how to hack this to you, but I can probably explain how to open the doors once I’ve unlocked them for you. Don’t worry – I’ll do all the lock-picking from here,” Johnny said, when Gared asked why he had to be the one waiting conspicuously by an empty stretch of wall to push at it when it beeped.

“What if anyone sees me? I’m bad at lying. You know how it went with Khlyen.”

“No, with how you completely tensed up when we were checking in, I had no idea,” Johnny snarked.

“Yeah, that was pretty bad, wasn’t it?” Gared rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously.

“Don’t worry,” Johnny told him, “most of the problems you’ll face you can probably solve with a blaster. You should set yours to stun, so you don’t worry about killing a Seyah or Seyon or two. I mean, I don’t particularly mind, but I hear they get upset about those kinds of things these days.”

“And what if I can’t solve it with blaster?”

“If that fails, try a grenade. Be careful though, the grenade is not set to stun. Maybe try to avoid aiming grenades at Seyahs.”

*

He was just unplugging Lucy from the console when an attendant came round the corner. Johnny quickly tucked Lucy away and gave her a winning smile. It was the receptionist who had checked them in, because of course it was.

“Hey, so I think I’m a bit lost. Where are the men’s changing rooms?” he asked.

She gave him a suspicious look, but then pasted on a customer service smile.

“You’re almost in the right place,” she said (which he knew – that was why he’d chosen that particular lie). “You just need to go back to the main corridor and head left, not right.”

“Oh, right,” he smacked himself in the forehead. “I’m an idiot. I bet my honey-bun’s already changed and waiting for me. Thanks.”

She didn’t leave him. In fact, she was so helpful, she wanted to walk him back to the men’s changing rooms, still with her customer support smile pasted on her face. Johnny was frantically working out possible ways to get rid of her. If nothing else, he could always actually go into the men’s changing rooms and pretend to change. She couldn’t follow him there.

As they rounded the corner, he heard soft voices. Gared, and someone else. Gared sounded fond, quiet, so it must be Pree. Johnny briefly wondered how they found each other, but he’d learnt not to look gift horses in the mouth, and to take his blessings when they come.

“Didn’t know you wanted me to,” he heard Gared say softly.

“Oh, Gare-bear, I’ll always want you to come for me,” the man who definitely was Pree said.

“You sounded so strange on the call. I thought maybe –”

“Oh, sweetheart, no. Never. They were listening, that’s why.”

“Isn’t that your husband?” the attendant asked with a frown.

Johnny saw two alternatives: either he could act jealous, draw attention, cause a scene – which had its place and could be very useful in some situations, but probably wouldn’t be very useful right now. Or he could roll with it, which under the circumstances struck him as a much better option.

“We have an open relationship. We’re swingers. Adds some spice to the relationship,” he said with a winning smile. He put just enough flirtation into it to make it possible to think that he might be suggesting something about her joining them, without making it inappropriate. He wanted her on their side, after all.

She looked dubious. Yeah, he wouldn’t buy it, either, if he were her. Hopefully he’d given it just enough to maybe convince her to hold off on alerting everyone that there were strange people in the resort, though, buying them enough time to get Pree and get out of there.

As they came to the sauna area, where the hidden door was located, they saw Gared wrapped around another fairly bulky man, their faces locked together. All Johnny and the attendant could see properly was Gared’s back. They separated briefly to get some air, and in that moment, they could see Pree’s face. Johnny took a second to take stock – he didn’t look too badly off, no obvious bruises or injuries, which was good. They didn’t seem to notice Johnny or the attendant, and went back to kissing deeply.

“Wait,” said the attendant, “isn’t that one of the political hostages?”

Her tone of voice was much more alarmed than when she’d asked if Gared was Johnny’s husband. He supposed given the circumstances, he could understand her worry. It was annoying that they’d had to break the kiss right then and there, though. Although he supposed they’d have had to come up for air sooner or later, and they’d have this exact situation, just later.

Pree, without breaking the kiss, leaned around to take the gun from Gared’s leg holster, and shot the attendant in the middle of the chest. She fell over, but her chest was still rising and falling, and there was no wound, so she was only stunned. Johnny was thankful Gared had left the blaster on stun – this way they didn’t have a dead body to clean up after. But it did put them on a time schedule – they had to get out of there before she woke up again, or before someone discovered her.

“That will never stop being hot,” Gared said. They deepened the kiss.

“Come on, guys. We don’t have all day here,” Johnny prodded them.

At least they didn’t have to go into the prison complex to look for Pree. He should have expected Pree being a badass and rescuing himself, really. Not that he was complaining, it made his job a lot easier.

“Well, I got myself out of the cells,” Pree corrected him when he said as much to Pree. “Not out of the prison complex – so thanks for that rescue. It was very timely.”

“Why does a holiday resort have prison cells?” Gared asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine, honey.”

“Who were they?”

“True Leithians, worried we’d revive the 7th gen accords at the summit. I considered holding the Qreshis to their word and letting the 7th geners move to Leith, but I decided not to. I want to improve quality of life for all Westerlyns, not choose who get to leave for a better life. I am loyal to Westerley,” Pree said, “not those who want to leave. Besides, I thought the Leithians would never agree – and I was clearly not wrong.”

“I hate politics,” Johnny commented. "And I thought we were done with the True Leithians."

“You try doing it for a living. I have to deal with Qreshis and Leithians and their petty demands pretty much on a daily basis,” Pree said. “I miss the good old days when I was just a bartender. At least the drunks in the Royale had amusing drama. Rich people are so tedious.”

“When were those days?” Johnny asked. “I must have missed them, because I can’t remember them. The way I remember it, you were never just a bartender.”

“Oh, sweetheart, you flatter me. Well, enough chit-chat. Let’s go save some Qreshis.”

“Must we?”

“I know how you feel, trust me, I really do, but yes. We must. Welcome to politics, sweetie.”

*

Johnny had quickly figured out several years ago that if you’d seen one prison complex, you’d seen them all. Gone were the luxurious tiles and soft blue walls of the spa. Now they were in long grey corridors of storage rooms. They weren’t built as cells. That made it slightly better. Still, there was no denying that the storage rooms were reinforced to also be able to hold humans, should there be a need.

This was why he preferred Westerley to Leith and Qresh. At least on Westerley, people were honest about stabbing you in the back. They didn’t hide their shitty storage room prisons behind luxury spas. When you were in a shitty Westerley prison, you knew it.

They found the Qreshis, two of them, bound and helpless in one such storage pod, with an energy shield on the door that was clearly designed to keep people in, not out. Johnny and Lucy made easy work of getting it down, and they went into the cell and started releasing Seyah Nenodall and Seyon Rinn, both fresh-faced and young. Johnny tried not to remember that Louella had killed the previous heads of both Land Nenodall and Land Rinn.

“This seems like an excellent time to discuss my request for reparations,” Pree said, as he was picking the lock of the cuffs of Seyon Rinn.

“We won’t give in to these demands. It’s an outrage!” said the Seyah Nenodall.

“Oops, I think my hand slipped trying to get this lock open. They’re very fiddly. I can’t make heads or tails of them, can you?” Pree commented.

“Very difficult,” Johnny agreed, stalling his progress on Seyah Nenodall’s cuffs. “I think we might just have to give up.”

Gared turned.

“Are we leaving?”

“I think we just might have to, honey-bear. There’s nothing more we can achieve here.”

He made a face at Gared, who looked confused, and then his face cleared as the penny dropped.

“I’ll let you know when it’s safe,” he said, and poked his head out the door.

“Fine, you’ll get your damned reparations!” the Seyah said. “On my honour as one of the Nine.”

“Well, would you look at that?” Johnny twisted the lock-pick. “Turns out it wasn’t so difficult, after all.”

She stood up and massaged her wrists.

“How do you plan to get us out of here?” she demanded.

Johnny and Pree exchanged a look.

“There’s no quality to these new Qreshis. If Delle Seyah were here, this would never have happened. She wouldn’t have stayed here waiting to be rescued,” Pree said.

“Delle Seyah’s not here?” Johnny asked. It seemed like an important event, surely she should be.

“Oh, she came for the first days to start the summit and scare the Qreshis into behaving. Yes, you,” Pree told the Seyon who was glaring at him. “And you needed it, so don’t say anything. Don’t front with me, I know exactly what you’re like. You’re lucky I’m not leaving you to your fate.”

“How do we know you didn’t organise this to make yourself look like the rescuers?”

“Honey, I may be many things, but that’s a bit too underhanded, even for me. All this suspicion, it really hurts my feelings.”

“There’s no gratitude in the world,” Johnny said.

“No manners,” Pree agreed.

“Kids these days.”

“It was far different in our day.”

“We had to get ourselves out of our scrapes.”

“We had to work for everything we had.”

“I had to walk five miles to the mine, work ten hours underground, and then walk five miles back,” Gared said – and unlike Johnny and Pree, he was completely sincere and serious. The Seyah and Seyon shut up, after that.

*

“Do we need to rescue the Leithian representatives too?” Johnny asked, herding the Qreshis towards the exit.

“No, they were in on it,” Pree said. He was taking point with Gared, Johnny covering the rear. “Those bastards,” he added. “Oh well, it makes our escape easier. Fewer people to take care of.”

“I like that you’re always so positive,” Johnny complimented him.

“Thank you,” he said. “I try.”

“Could we possibly keep the mutual admiration to when we’re off this damned planet?” asked Seyah Nenodall.

*

They were discovered on their way out, because of course they were. The Leithians had disassembled the port to connect Lucy to, that he needed to open the door from the inside. Presumably they had some other way of getting out to the main parts of the resort complex. But there had been no other door marked on the schematics Lucy had found, Johnny could probably hack it himself to either find schematics or get the door open, but it would take hours they didn’t have.

“Well, this was about as far as I got on my own,” Pree said. “Do you have any grand plans to get us out of here?”

“Give me a moment,” Johnny said, thinking quickly.

Gared held up a hand with something in it.

“Uh, I have these grenades,” he said.

“Oh, Gare-bear, I could kiss you right now,” Pree said and did exactly that.

The first thing about grenades was that they worked. If you needed a hole, they would make a hole. The second thing about grenades was that they worked _loudly_. If you needed a hole, they would make a hole by blasting the wall to pieces in an explosion that could be heard for miles. They had about three seconds before the first armed Leithians started bearing down on their location.

The Qreshis huddled in the middle: it was all right for Gared and Pree, up in front, but Johnny had to make sure his shots at the Leithians didn’t hit them.

“The point of this sabbatical was to not be shot at all the time!” Johnny said, dodging a suspiciously coloured beam of light.

“Oh, come on honey, you know you’ve missed it.”

“I’ll never admit it!”

But yeah, he kind of had.

*

In a move that way disturbingly familiar, and even more disturbingly exhilarating, they made it back onto Lucy under fire, closing the hatch just before their pursuers could follow them onto her. Lucy, because she was amazing and badass and wonderful in every single way, had lifted off before Johnny could as much as say hi to her.

They got the Qreshis settled in a spare room on Lucy (it wasn’t really spare – it was the room Zeph always used when she was staying over, but it was either that or D’av’s or Dutch’s rooms, and that really wasn’t happening. No way).

“Well, that was quite an exciting trip,” Pree said. “Maybe a bit too exciting.”

He and Gared were still holding hands – they hadn’t let go of each other since they all got back onto Lucy. Johnny had to do all the hard work getting the Qreshis settled, while Gared and Pree had their loving reunion. But he supposed they had the right to it after the day they’d both had.

“Well, Gared and I got to pretend to be married, so now I’m two for two,” Johnny said.

“Is there something you want to tell us?” Pree asked. “We’re always open to new experiences. And also, was he a better fake husband than me?”

“Gared took me to a lovely resort on Leith. They even folded the towels into hearts. Where did you take me? To a criminal hangout.”

“It was an exciting criminal resort!”

“I threw a grenade at a wall,” was Gared’s contribution.

“See – exciting!” Johnny grinned at them both. “Sorry, I think Gared is winning this fake husband competition.”

“Well, you weren’t exactly winning any prizes either,” Pree said in mock offense. “You insulted my mother. Worst husband ever.”

“Well, fine! At least Lucy still loves me.”

“I will always love you, Johnny. Even when no one else does.”

“Yeah, thanks, Lucy. You always know how to cheer me up,” Johnny said making a face, as Pree laughed so hard he had to lean on Gared for support.

“Right. Let’s head home.”

“Lucy, set course for Westerley,” Johnny said. Might as well see if there was a place for him back home on Westerly. After all, he had his fake husbands there. Finding a new family hadn’t really worked out that well for him. Time to see if reconnecting with his old one would work better.


End file.
